Places I have visited

Here is an attempt to depict all the places I have visited so far, at least the important ones.....



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Jungfrau Pictures

Virtual Tour of US

Thanks to the map sites on the Internet, it is now possible to take a virtual tour of the major attractions present in the US. First it was Microsoft's http://local.live.com, which provided 'Bird's eye view' of all major cities of the US. With this, you could pretty much see every monument and every building of importance in its high-quality picture, as though you're standing right next to it. I was amazed to see clear pictures of each casino on the Las Vegas strip! This was last year.

Just recently I read about Google having introduced the 'Street View' feature in its map site. With this, you can see a 360 degree view of almost any location on the streets of the US city for which this facility has been enabled. This means that you can view the details of every little street on Manhattan Island! That's pretty amazing. Not just that, the direction arrows on this picture allows you to actually navigate in either directions of the street, thus giving you a feel of actually passing through the street. That's quite good for a virtual tour!

Buses in Kolkata

I recently got a chance to ride on the buses of Kolkata city. Trust me, my respect for Bangalore buses and their service has gone up multi-fold after seeing the Kolkata buses. It's true that they're quite economical for the reason that they are run by many private parties along with the state transport amidst stiff competition. But the condition of the buses are pathetic. It's even OK to travel during the day. The dim lights that 'illuminate' these small buses at night are even more depressing.

The seats are more of benches than seats. There is some hard cushioning at the bottom, if you're lucky, but you have hurt your back if you lean on the back rest. I found standing to be more comfortable that sitting on those seats. The left row is meant for the ladies while the right one for the men. Because they're run by private people, they stop indefinitely sometimes at a stop to gather enough people to proceed. However this problem is limited to Sundays and holidays only as otherwise they're mostly overcrowded.

I had heard before that BMTC buses, the ones in Bangalore, are some of the best in the country. It was hard for me to imagine while I was there in Bangalore, looking at those overcrowded buses with people oozing out of the doors. But, talking the condition, frequency and comfort, I must say they're much better than those of many other places that I have seen in India.

Tech Tweaks I like - 1

The New York Times website has a simple and unique feature which I have not found anywhere else on the web yet. If you double click on a word to select it, the site pops up a window showing the meaning of that selected word. This is a simple and very useful feature that anyone would want while reading a news paper. Considering the fact that there are often umpteen words in the articles that we don't know the meaning of. This feature really makes it easy for us to lookup the meaning without having to go out of that site.

This is part of the new trend emerging, the 'in-context' information being made available in many websites. Hope to see more of such simple innovations.

Wellington town..

After a lot of deliberation, I, along with my friends, was able to plan and execute a trip to the neighboring town of Ooty, known as Wellington. It is a small place with a few hundred houses and an Army base (DSSC.. not entirely sure what it stands for). The town lies on the way from Ooty to Coonoor by road or rail.

The town has an old railway station with its 'old-time' look (supposedly built in 1908). The narrow guage tracks with grass all around them were a pleasant sight. The station, along with the rest of Wellington and the green mountains were in the range of view from the window of our hotel room. And since it was away from the crowded Ooty, it was very peaceful. Coonoor was just a couple of kms away from there, although the actual points of attraction were further up in Coonoor.

The scenic tea estates of Coonoor, ('Dolphin's Nose' and 'Lamb's rock') were a treat to the eyes. The botanical garden of Ooty was good, mainly because we went in quite early in the morning. A little later during the day, the place gets flooded with people, masking the whole greenery of the garden. The lake was overcrowded as expected and there was hardly any space to sit/walk around the lake. We didn't even attempt to get the tickets for the boat ride.

It is a little hard to digest that the roads in this 'prime tourist destination' area around Ooty and Coonoor were in a pathetic condition. Except for driving on these roads, the trip was pretty good.

Speed Limits in India

It is a well known fact that the Speed limits for traffic in India is a hypothetical concept which only exists in principle. Everyone knows that and so did I. But sometimes if I chance upon a speed limit sign board somewhere, I am reminded of this hypothesis!

A few days back, on my way home from office, I got stuck in a heavy traffic jam. Naturally the traffic was moving at speeds lesser than that which a person walks at. With my radio plugged into my ears, I kept watching the vehicles and people around me. I was pitying the guy who had bought a brand new Audi A4 luxury car and was stuck in the same traffic jam as I was with my pulsar! At that snails pace, I happened to notice this small sign board on the left, which specified the various speed limits for the different categories of vehicles. Believe me, there were about 5-6 categories mentioned with their respective speed limits. And the size of the sign board had limited the size and hence the visibility of these figures. I was amused by the thought that, eventhough I was in a jam moving at < 10km/hr speed I was not able to read the speed limit values, how did the authorities expect people zooming off next to it to read those values and adhere to them!

Sadly the rules in India have got a new definition, of being breakable and bendable inherently.